Shovel-ready public works projects funded by the American Recovery Act helped keep the economy moving during the recession, but it will be the people who run and maintain those infrastructure improvements who sustain growth in the long term, according to a new report by Brookings.

“When we talk about jobs and infrastructure, it has almost always been framed in terms of those short-term kinds of construction, shovel-ready types of jobs,” said report author Joseph Kane, a researcher at the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program. “While those jobs are certainly important, once a road, or bridge or water treatment plant is constructed, that’s not the end. These facilities are apt to be around for years, if not decades.”

About 11 percent of U.S. workers labor at work related to transportation, logistics, energy, water, telecommunications and public works.

The jobs pay well and tend to have low educational barriers to entry. More than 80 percent of infrastructure workers receive short- or long-term on-the-job training, but only 12 percent hold a bachelor’s degree or higher.

Most infrastructure workers remain in their jobs for decades.

“They really support and serve as a foundation for other businesses and other economic activities,” Kane said.

In metro Denver, about 124,500 people, or 10.3 percent of the workforce, have infrastructure jobs, compared with Colorado Springs, where 19,520 people, or 8.5 percent, work in infrastructure.

Over the next decade, jobs in the 95 categories assessed by the report are projected to increase 9.1 percent, led by such occupations as wind turbine service technicians and solar photovoltaic installers, Kane said.

Policymakers focused on investment in physical structures also must figure out how to recruit the next generation to jobs that can range from truck drivers, electricians and telecom installers, to pilots, architects and meter readers.

“It really comes down to a combination of actors both in the public and private sector, but particularly those in individual states and metropolitan areas, to really address a lot of these issues on their own as they’ve already been doing with the investment needs for the physical structures,” Kane said.

The owners of Boulder’s Sterling University Peaks apartments, who this summer were cited for illegally subdividing 92 bedrooms in the complex, have reached an agreement to settle the case for $410,000, the city announced Thursday.

A local union president slammed by Donald Trump on Twitter stood his ground Thursday, maintaining the president-elect gave false hope to hundreds of workers by inflating the number of jobs being saved at a Carrier Corp. factory in Indianapolis.

Fast forward to today, and Larkburger is celebrating its 10th anniversary, having grown from one restaurant in Edwards to 12 locations in the state amid increasingly fierce competition in the “better burger” world.